IFRS 17 Ins ight s

L O N D O N

IFRS 17 Roadshow: Greetings from London!

The Power of Combined Minds

Like our previous roadshow events in Toronto & NYC, we welcomed a mix of finance

leaders, accountants, actuaries, and advisors to discuss IFRS projects and

considerations.

At Grange St. Paul’s hotel, Aptitude Software IFRS 17 Experts, Linda Bembridge and

Chris Roberts presented to a packed room of insurers and partners, including two

members of the IFRS 17 Transition Resource Group and some of the leading advisors

in the market.

Lloyd’s of London, RSA, SwissRE Insurance, MS Amlin and others listened attentively

as Linda spoke about the accounting considerations of IFRS 17 and the learnings

coming out of our current client projects and POCs. Chris walked the audience

through a demo of our IFRS 17 solution.

During the networking session and breaks, attendees compared notes on IFRS 17

progress (most seem to have completed their research phase and were now looking

to start doing proof of concepts) and discussed the accounting and resourcing

challenges that seem to be surfacing.

Key Takeaways

The conversation was varied but as we wanted to highlight a few top takeaways that

stood out from the event discussions.

While compliance may be the initial (and worthy!) goal, it can be a first step on a

longer journey.

We are hearing from many insurers that while they want to use IFRS 17 to make

improvements to their finance architecture, compliance feels like enough of an effort

for right now. We understand and support this but we believe there is a way to define

your IFRS 17 project and solution that will allow you to achieve compliance within the

deadline and then slowly move to compliance with control & substantiation on to

compliance with control, substantiation & flexibility and finally to full finance

transformation.

Project resourcing is a significant aspect of IFRS 17

Staffing IFRS 17 projects was a topic that came up frequently – often followed by

the phrase “our staff is flat out!” Insurers are exiting their impact assessment

phases and beginning to think about and plan how the implementation will actually

happen. And like any large-scale effort, the devil is in the details. IFRS 17 will

require hiring the right number of people as well as people with the depth of

actuarial and accounting experience required. One attendee talked about trying to

kick off their project as soon as possible to avoid skills shortages in the market.

Final Thoughts

Two of the most prevalent sentiments that our team heard during the networking

were that attendees know there is a lot about IFRS 17 they don’t understand and

that they want to see a real, genuine product solution to IFRS 17 complexities, not

just another promise.

We’re looking forward to helping clients through the IFRS 17 change process. For

more material, market perspectives and upcoming roadshow event details, please

visit the IFRS 17 Resources page.